


Look Me in the Eyes and Tell Me You Don't Want Me

by DilynAliceBlake



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24994177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DilynAliceBlake/pseuds/DilynAliceBlake
Summary: A drunk and melancholy Edward Nygma tries one last time to seize his life's missed opportunities.  (The plural is misleading.  The only thing that ever slipped through his fingers was love.)My fourth failed attempt at smut.  I know when to admit something isn't working.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	Look Me in the Eyes and Tell Me You Don't Want Me

There are a lot of things Oswald expects on a Tuesday night in Gotham. Certainly he's not gone soft enough not to expect  _ anything _ . He's had too many attempts on his life for that. So assassins or the Batman, or anything Joker related since there's no predicting that menace. Any of those, he might find on his couch any given evening. Sometimes magic or Commissioner Gordon might be involved, just to spice things up.

"What the fuck," he whispers to himself, because Edward Nygma is passed out in his livingroom in nothing but his unmentionables.

Or, scratch that, not passed out. One bleary eye opens behind crooked spectacles.

"Ozzy!" he slurs with a smile, and flings one hand up in an approximation of a wave. "Was just waiting on you."

"You're drunk," Oswald states, because the answer to 'Why are you here?' has presented itself. "Where are your clothes?"

Ed looks down at his bare chest like it's a revelation.

"I took them off. It was too hot. It's very hot, Oswald- Who let it be so hot?". At the last he peers entreatingly up as if genuinely expecting an answer, and from the ruddy flush to his face the answer is likely Jim Bean.

"Where did you take them off," Oswald tries again, voice an irritated hiss.

"At the church," Ed says clearly, pleased and proud to present this answer.

"Why were you- You know what. Doesn't matter. I'll get you a robe, and then you can be on your way to ruin someone else's night."

The sweet pout on Ed's face shouldn't sway him, but the devastation Riddler emotes is sweet.

"I ruined your evening?" he mourns pathetically, rolling a bit towards standing before he abandons the notion as beyond his current faculties.

"I miss when we were imevble. Intevbl." His tongue is twisted, and based on the blush it's only half from the alcohol in his system.

"Inevitable," Edward manages. "I miss feeling like we were effected by each others' gravity. You've moved on, Oswald. I'm still orbiting around you and you don't even care."

"Did you invent a new and more intense way to get yourself inebriated, Nygma?" Certainly a sober Ed would hardly be admitting to any of this.

"It's liquid courage," he whines. "I was sober when I decided to come visit, Oswald. I just wasn't brave enough…"

"This is hardly the first time you've darkened my doorstep uninvited."

"I don't deserve to kiss you, but you deserve to be kissed," Ed says, eyes so startlingly clear for a moment Penguin can't even hide from the lucidity of the statement.

"Would you like a kiss, Oswald?"

"Not from you," he lies, and it's many months of them not running into each other at all before he hears thirdhand about the Riddler's apparent retirement.

He hates himself for not seeing the goodbye for what it was, but if he had known, he wouldn't have been able to let go. He can't pretend it's what he wanted to happen, but he can accept that perhaps it was for the best.

At least; that's what he tells himself, on the nights when his loneliness rings.


End file.
